Amanda Poll

Chapter 1. Beth Death

Why don’t you and your sister drop dead!

The words that I shouted at Jessica when I stomped out of school yesterday echo in my head, as I walk as quickly as I can in my clunky DM boots. Late for school again, I curse myself for taking too long to apply my black eyeliner this morning. I can’t leave home without it though. I have my ‘Beth Death’ image to live up to and I need to look as different as possible from those prissy popular girls—especially Jessica and her sister Freya—who gave me the nickname when I transferred to this shitty little school eight months ago.

I tug my faux leather jacket tighter in the crisp morning air. My breath comes out in white puffs like when I tried one of my stepdad’s cigarettes. Turning the corner, I see blue lights flashing everywhere in the school. What the heck is going on? The whole school appears to be gathered outside––students and teachers. Everyone is talking, but of course nobody speaks to me when I approach. The closest I get is a dirty look from one of the cheerleaders––stuck-up cow.

Curiosity pulls me through the crowd of people.

“Hey, what’s happened?” I ask a skinny kid standing alone who just shrugs his shoulders. I guess I’ll have to find out myself. Big surprise there. No one at this school likes me. I’m just the weird new emo freak whose stepdad owns a morgue.

The commotion seems to be coming from outside the boarders’ building, where a group of people have gathered. The teachers try to hold them away, which naturally means I want to get through to see the exciting stuff! The creepy feeling in my gut tells me it’s not a good thing—like Mr. Humphries, my skeevy history teacher, having a heart attack.

I push my way through the crowd, everyone being too keen to see what’s going on to notice me as I bob and weave my way through the masses. I'm just about to slip between two ambulances when someone grabs the back of my shoulder.

“I can't let you through there." The woman speaking to me is short but her grip on my shoulder is as strong as iron. Who is this woman? Wonder Woman? No, her uniform has all of the characteristics of a first responder.

“I just want to take a look,” I mumble, craning my neck to look between the gap. A pool of red glazes the floor—one that can't be mistaken for anything other than blood. I've seen it enough times on TV, but a dumbstruck part of me still has to ask, “Is that blood?”

She whips me away, so quickly that dizziness comes over me. By the time my head manages to come together, I'm looking at the crowd, all of us equally bewildered.

“What happened?” I ask, again getting no reply, just a sea of gasps as a body bag comes through on a stretcher. A chill runs down my spine—the kind of ice that only comes alongside death. I should know—I have a morgue attached to my house.

The body bag rolls past me as if in slow motion and people part like the Red Sea did for Moses. Loud whispers repeat over and over again: Suicide.

Suicide. Suicide. Suicide.

It doesn't seem real.

Who could it be? I want to ask someone, but my mouth is suddenly dry. When I manage to get saliva on my tongue, it sticks like sludge, and I have to choke it back uncomfortably.

One might think that a dead body wouldn’t affect me so much, but my stepdad’s morgue is strictly out of bounds when a body is in there. What with this death happening at my school, and seeing all the blood, I feel suffocated. Like I’m the one in that awful zipped up bag.

I can’t move. The cold extends past my spine and sticks me to the floor. I stay like this, a living statue, until the ambulance doors close with a bang.

The same first responder who pulled me back, shakes her head at Paul Taker, our English teacher. All the girls fancy him, but he’s not my type. However, he overlooks my heavy eyeliner and not-so-natural jet-black hair, so I pretend to give a shit about Shakespeare in return. That seems fitting now, as we are obviously in some kind of tragedy. He pushes his glasses up with his middle finger and gives a stout nod. Acknowledgement. Somebody is dead, and that somebody is probably a student.

“I see you looking, Beth Death. This is right up your alley, isn't it?” says Lucy, Jessica’s BFF. She's so close to me I can smell the Fruit Loops on her breath. I don't respond. “I bet this is giving you a hard-on, someone dying. You're probably thinking about it right now. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you pushed her after what you said yesterday.” She dabs the corner of her eyes with a tissue.

I’ve been accused of some pretty messed up stuff before, but this really takes the cake.

“I don't even know what happened here,” I say a little too desperately.

Lucy tuts. “I bet. We all know what you and your family are like. I can't believe that your creepy stepdad is going to have his hands on poor Freya. She fell a long way, so her body’s a mess, but you love that kind of thing, don't you? You're even creepier than he is.”

She goes on, but I don't hear it. All I hear is a low-pitched buzzing. Freya––the same Freya who gave me my nickname––is dead? It doesn't seem right. Especially not from suicide. She wasn’t depressed. She was super popular, and always had money to get manicures and the false eyelashes that looked like two spiders on her face. She was happy. Wasn't she?

I didn’t know her. Not closely, but, then again, I’m not close with anyone at this school.

I don’t mean to say it out loud, but the words, “I guess you never know what goes on behind closed doors,” slip past my lips.

“You're so weird!" Lucy rolls her eyes. “I bet you can’t wait to get a look at her.”

“That's enough." Mr Taker comes over.

“Did she jump? Tell us, Sir!” someone shouts from behind me and everyone else starts chiming in, bombarding him with similar questions.

I still can't move. It's awful. Just awful.

“Alright, alright. Settle down. All you need to know right now is that classes are cancelled today. You can all go home. I will see you fresh tomorrow morning. Now please move out of the way of the emergency vehicles…” Mr. Taker shoos us away.

The crowd reluctantly disperses and shuffles to the side. I manage to tug my foot from the Earth and get out of the way of the ambulance as it cuts through the crowd. The school grounds have never been so silent. Not a single phone rings, not even a cough. It turns out the ambulance doesn’t run the sirens when there’s a corpse in the back. The blaring whee-ooh is reserved for the living only, which strikes me as being disrespectful—as if they’re no longer important. Don’t the dead deserve a sort of urgency, too? One police car follows behind. The others stay on school grounds. Only a few of the kids have actually left.

Death on the school grounds has cast some sort of spell over all of us. No one wants to leave. No one has anything to say, either. Mr. Taker keeps trying to usher people off, and a few of them respond that they need to call their parents to come pick them up. The police wrap up the area in yellow and black tape, talking to one another about how sad it is that a young person would take their own life. Students are spreading rumours about what the body looked like after the fall. Each one wilder than the last, hitting Looney Tunes levels of unbelievable. The word “pancake” is used to describe her just as many times as “cracked watermelon”.

Without the ambulance around, it’s a lot easier to shuffle close enough to the building to get a glimpse of the crime scene. The pool of blood is like an ocean of claret, stretching out and reaching the brickwork. Small parts of what looks like Freya’s brains are in it. I can't help but lift my eyes, looking up to the top of the two-storey building from where she possibly jumped. Something is not right. I’ll never drink claret again.

Then again, how is death supposed to feel? One would think that I would be used to it, considering how many dead bodies have been in our house. My stepdad’s ‘studio’ connects to our garage, where I have felt the chill of death, but never has it felt so close or so icy. Never has it curled its long fingers around me in such a way as this.

Freya is gone, but the mystery remains.

***

I can’t get warm, not since seeing that blood. When I get back home, I put on one of my black, cat print sweatshirts. I never wear it out of the house because I think that the cats on it are a little childish, but it’s the warmest thing that I own. It doesn’t help at all.

The sun has long since passed and the chill remains in the moon-soaked air.

Ice penetrates my skin, straight into my bones. Something isn’t right. I feel it.

I sit on my bed and try to sketch. It always calms me down. The pencil flicks about and I end up toying with it in my fingers. Nothing comes. The lines just sit there on the page, as unconnected as my thoughts. I attempt a mock album cover because that works great for doodling, but halfway through I end up scratching it all out until nothing but thick, angry charcoal lines fill the page. I turn it, frustrated, and try to doodle something else instead.

The results are pretty much the same. Nothing I put on paper is good enough to finish. This hardly ever happens. Even if every piece I scratch out isn’t a masterpiece, I can always glean a little bit of joy from my little doodles. Not this time, it seems. I just can't settle tonight. I'm not sure whether it's because of what I saw or because I know a new body is in our house—Freya’s body. My whole body shudders.

A lot of people have ended up on my stepdad’s table, but I’ve never known any of them before. Is that why this time feels different—because I can put a name to the body bag—because I can put a face to the corpse? I didn’t even like Freya—hell, yesterday I wished her dead. But I didn’t mean it and the thought of her ending up on my stepdad’s table is just… surprisingly unsettling.

I should be getting on with my homework. After all, school will be open again tomorrow. But how can I possibly think of homework now? I bite down on my lower lip, chewing as if that will take away the nerves. Focus, I tell myself, forcing the pencil to paper so hard that the graphite snaps and pings away. That's it. I can't handle this anymore. I screw up the paper, tossing it into the wastepaper basket where it bounces twice and goes in. Usually, a shot like that would have me jumping up and down on the bed and fist pumping the air, but not today. Today is perhaps the strangest day I have ever experienced.

My whole being feels weird. It’s like I’m the one that ended up a crumpled heap on the ground. Or a smear to scrape off.

A thought occurs to me, one as dark as the storm clouds swirling overhead, illuminated on the edges by moonlight and the lightning trying to burst out of them. Maybe if I went down there to see her, I could get my mind off things. It's a sick thought. Yet it is the only one I have. It runs around in my brain like some sort of ferocious weasel. I place the pencil down on the side and sit on the edge of my bed. It wouldn't be difficult to get down there. It isn't like my stepdad hides the keys, probably because no one else in this house would be interested in going into his precious morgue.

I might even be able to just ask him… But I crush that thought like a particularly irritating fly. Not only would I never want to ask him for anything, I have little doubt that he would tell me no just to spite me.

I slip off my boots and stand up as slowly as I can, making as little sound as a moth. It's my intention to flutter down the stairs and that will be much easier if I'm just wearing socks—admittedly, knee-high stripy ones, but they will do the job as well as look great.

Just to get some practice in, I make sure to flutter soundlessly across my room, dodging my discarded backpack and my ever-growing pile of unfolded but clean laundry.

My hand presses against the edge of the door as I undo it, as if that will somehow silence the opening. It creaks and I cringe.

“I'm just getting a drink if anyone asks,” I tell myself as I slip out of the doorway and close it back up with a click. Hopefully, the keep out poster on my door will prevent my family from letting themselves in, though it never seems to stop Mum from getting the washing. I'm panicking for no reason. This is my house too; I should be allowed to go anywhere I see fit. Not to mention, it's far too late for doing laundry. I can do this. It's simple.

Taking a deep breath, I inch my way across the hallway and pause at the top of the stairs. I can’t hear anyone else moving around. I creep down the stairs, lightly placing one foot after the other. Never have I been so grateful for carpet muffling my feet. Even when I snuck out last month to see Annika and the Purple Monkeys. Three steps remain when there is a noise from upstairs. I freeze.

It was just a cough, nobody seems to have woken up. That's good. Despite this, I linger a little while just to be sure.

The living room is empty, just like I thought it would be. It’s not much further now. The entrance to our house is a little, narrow sort of foyer. I creep past it and into the kitchen, glancing around. There’s still no sign of anyone upstairs having woken up. I try not to count myself too lucky. This mission has barely started.

My stepdad’s keys are right in front of me. They sit in the fruit bowl on the back of the kitchen counter, next to the ones for the car and a very sad looking apple. I hook them out with my nail, and they jingle slightly. I cringe, desperately listening out for movement over my pounding heartbeat. Why am I doing this again? Freya. I have to see Freya with my own eyes. It just isn't going to seem real if I don't.

The jingle isn’t loud enough to wake anyone, thankfully. I move through the kitchen and back into the living room. My gaze drifts towards the stairs. From this angle, they’re engulfed in shadow, and seemingly lead up into this empty black stretching darkness. There’s something unnerving about that. Maybe because if my stepdad comes barrelling down them right now, he’ll look like a monster that’s crawled out from beneath the bed.

I take the keys to the doorway by the side of the garage, confident that no one can hear me. I'm far away from the house now, rain is starting to fall. It bounces off the corrugated sheet metal of our garage in a melodious pattern that hides my mischief. There has never been a more perfectly timed storm.

The key goes into the lock, and I twist, using more power than I imagined. Perhaps it’s a mental block. The door is now unlocked, but not yet open. I inhale deeply, taking my last breath of free air before going into that room of death.

Once I’ve mustered my strength, the door glides open, moving as swiftly as the robes of the grim reaper himself. Holding my breath, I take a step over the threshold. Right away I turn and close the door, pressing my hand against it and lingering as long as I can. I know as soon as I turn around, Freya is going to be there on the slab.

The tiles are cold underneath my feet even through the fabric of my striped socks. It’s just another thing to send a shiver running up my spine. The air smells of disinfectant with an edge of glue. Most people don't realise that when bodies are brought here, they are put back together with glue and haberdashery. It's my stepdad’s job to sew together their lips so their mouths don't pop open and they aren't left gawking as their loved ones come to see them. It's the same thing with the eyes, except they are glued together. These are the sort of charming details which he likes to share while I'm trying to eat my dinner. This family is so messed up, it's unreal. I know that everyone thinks their own family is a bit weird, teenagers especially, but what could be normal about what he does for a living?